VMware Homeserver - ESXi on Gigabyte BRIX

Beside NUCs and Mac minis there is another great barebone in the homelab market. Basic requirements for home server are a decent price, good performance and low power consumption. Gigabytes BRIX offers great performance and is small in size and power consumption and thus makes it a great candidate for running ESXi at home. To get started, first a look at the different models available at the moment.

BRIX: Basic Barebone, candidate for ESXi.

GB-BXi3-4010: Intel Core i3-4010U (2x 1.7GHz)

GB-BXi5-4200: Intel Core i5-4200U (2x 2.6GHz)

GB-BXi7-4500: Intel Core i7-4500U (2x 3.0GHz)

BRIX s: Identical to BRIX barebones but with 2.5" HDD/SDD support. Slightly larger case and a good candidate for ESXi.

GB-BXi3H-4010: Intel Core i3-4010U (2x 1.7GHz)

GB-BXi5H-4200: Intel Core i5-4200U (2x 2.6GHz)

GB-BXi7H-4500: Intel Core i7-4500U (2x 3.0GHz)

BRIX Pro: High performance BRIX with 2.5" HDD/SDD support and quad-core CPU. These are the only systems with VT-d support and thus the best candidate for ESXi.

GB-BXi5-4570R: Intel Core i5-4570R (4x 3.20 GHz)

GB-BXi7-4770R: Intel Core i7-4770R (4x 3.90 GHz)

There is also a Brix Gaming series with GPU support and a BRIX Projector with an integrated projector. BRIX with AMD and Celeron CPUs are also available but these are not the best candidates for ESXi. I'm listing them here for completeness.

BRIX Projector GB-BXPi3-4010

BRIX Gaming GB-BXi5G3-760

BRIX Gaming GB-BXi5G-760

BRIX Gaming GB-BXi7G3-760

BRIX Gaming (AMD) GB-BXA8G-8890

BRIC (AMD) GB-BXA8-5545

BRIX (Celeron) GB-BXBT-2807

Features

The Kits are shipped with:

Chassis

System board

Processor (soldered)

power adapter

Power cord

VESA Bracket

To get an ESXi Host installed you need:

Memory (SO-DIMM DDR3L)

mSATA SSD

USB-Stick

2,5" HDD/HDD (BRIX s and BRIX Pro)

Model comparison

Best candidates for ESXi are BRIX, BRIX s and BRIX Pro. I am not looking further into other models.

HCL and VMware ESXi Support

All listed BRIX systems have hardware support for virtualization and a 64-bit capable CPU. Therefore it should be compatible to VMware ESXi. Gigabyte BRIX Pro barebones have Intel VT-d support which makes the system better and installation easier.

To clarify, the system is not supported by VMware (Not listed in HCL), so do not use this system in a productive environment. I can not guarantee that it will work stable. As a home lab, or a small home server it should be fine.

You have to create a customized image or the installer will fail with the following error message:

No Network Adapters

No network adapters were detected. Either no network adapters are physically connected to the system, or a suitable driver could not be located. A third party driver my be required.

Install ESXi on Gigabyte BRIX

SATA and Network drivers are not included in the ESXi Base Image, so you have to create a customized image. This is a very easy step, everyone can do it at home in 10 minutes.

Use the following commands to create a customized ESXi Image for you BRIX. This will download all required files (about 300MB) and create a bootable ISO file. If you want to use another ESXi version than ESXi 5.5 February Patch 2015, select another Image Profile. A list of all Image Profiles is available here.
Create an ISO if you have a BRIX Pro

Danny - Have you figured anything out on this? Currently having same issue. Built with the method here. If I boot with CSM enabled it hangs at "initializing storage stack" and If I disable it, I get "command line is empty. Fatal error: 32 (syntax)

Hope this saves someone time and headaches.... Just setup a BRIX Pro with i7, and ESXi 5.5. Using an external CD drive (usb drive would not work), then disabling CSM, the install completes without any issues.

The problem occurs following the installation of ESXi. After assigning a management IP, and restarting the network service, ESXi would not respond to pings and I could not login via vSphere. Also, after disconnecting from power, subsequent attempts to power on the BRIX failed. To fix the issue, I had to disconnect the CMOS battery to get back into the BIOS settings. I RE-enabled CSM, powered on and the BRIX has performed flawlessly since.

Follow up: I "solved" my own problem. USB Cd drive is the answer. For whatever reason it doesn't want to install from the Flash drive. I tried numerous methods of putting the iso onto a flash drive to no avail. Booted up no problem on USB cd drive. No install issues beyond that! Thanks for the guide and software!

CD drive was the way to go for me as well. I pretty much did the same thing you did with different bios setting, placing the IOS on the thumb drive with different settings. Finely went out & got a ex-CD drive I did this a few days ago, should have updated my results. Shame on me. sorry about that =/

so now I have 3x GB-BXi7-4500(ESXI)
& one GB-BXi3-4010 (server 2012 with Vcenter)

No worries man, Helps me keep up on my trouble shooting skills - aka the issue is probably the simpest solution haha. Anyways, I'm very pleased. This was used to replace a dell poweredge 2950 used as a home media server - I was getting tired of the noise. With all 3 of my VMs running, the APC backup is showing ~9watts of consumption and ~186hrs on battery time! Well worththe trouble!

Or, if you don't have a paid subscription so you can get the offline bundle (without a lot of screwing around, that is), Sign up for a trial of vSphere 6, grab the hypervisor ISO, and use ESXi Customizer to inject the drivers, which is what I did.

The 2 driver files you need to inject are here (NIC) and here (AHCI). In both cases, you want the Offline Bundle version at the bottom of the page.

For an overview of how to use ESXi-Customizer, I referred to this link. It isn't specifically for the Brix, but it'll give you an idea of how to build the modified vSphere 6 ISO (note that when you get to the part where you add the drivers in ESXi-Customizer, it won't show the .zip files you downloaded until you change the file type in the open dialog to "all files").

Finally, make sure you disable CSM in the Brix's BIOS, or it'll probably hand in the middle of the install.

I think you're right. I redid everything and used PowerCLI instead of ESX Customizer. Everything seems to have installed, but now it just says Initializing Storage Stack. Perhaps I should just be patient. :-)

I just thought I'd leave a message here for everyone trying to get ESX 5.5 installed on a BRIX and getting either the hang at "Initializing storage stack" or the "Command line is empty. Fatal error: 32 (syntax)" error.

I just bought a GB-BXi3H-4010 and was trying to install v5.5 on it from a Sandisk Fit USB drive. I did not touch anything in the BIOS and got the hang at "Initializing storage stack".

So I followed the instructions in this article and went to BIOS > Boot > CSM Parameters and set "Launch CSM" to Disabled. Rebooted again and got the "Command line is empty" error.

"hey,i guess you are installing esxi 5.1 with uefi boot mode .To solve this problem you have to get a esxi 6.0.iso file and extract EFI\boot\BOOTX64.EFI BOOTIA32.EFI ,then put this two files into same path in esxi 5.1.iso . it should be working now."

So I downloaded the ESX 6 ISO, pulled out the two files and overwrote the existing ones on my flash drive. It booted and installed successfully!

Note that I am not using the "noIOMMU" parameter, whatever this does, my install appears to be working fine without it.

Downloading ESXi 6 ISO and extracting those files, then replacing those files on the 5.5 ISO worked to get it to boot from a flash drive and start installation of ESXi 5.5. I was able to get it installed and started without issues after that.

I have a BXi7-4770R and I followed the instructions and got esxi 5.5 installed but it will not respond to any network tests. When I look at the Network config I see the adapter and I am able to configure it. When I do a packet capture I see some arp packets come from the BRIX but when my computer responds it just asks again like it never got the response. Any ideas on what I should do next?

Probably a bit late for you, but might help others.
I have a BXi7-4470R with the latest BIOS. I disabled CSM (otherwise I always got the hang at "Initializing storage stack), installed a custom ESXi 5.5 with no issues (fine from CD and PXE, but gave up with USB stick), but always got this network issue. I then disabled IPv6 and all is now well.